On stage at a National
Small Business Week event in Washington, D.C., last week,
Schnatter revealed the critical insight that propelled the
company to such success.

"At the time, Domino's owned speed, Caesar's owned price, Pizza
Hut variety, and 65% of the marketplace was independents," he
said. "So I said, 'What if you had a chain that acted like an
independent? What if you had a chain focused on quality?' It's
pretty obvious."

To get an understanding of positioning, marketing consultancy
Optimization Group explains:

The breakthrough part of the (book) is that 'a positioning exists
only in the mind of the customer.' Ries and Trout felt that, in
an era of information overload, which at the time was driven by
continuous streams of advertising messages, the consumer would
only be able to accept and absorb those messages consistent with
prior knowledge or experience. 'Positioning' would help the
advertiser break through the message clutter. 'Positioning'
presents a simplified message consistent with what the consumer
already believes by focusing on the perceptions of the consumer,
rather than on the reality of the product.

This is the brilliance of Papa John's gambit: Customers were
already familiar with eating quality pizza — their local vendors
had been delivering it for years. But no national company had
organized itself around quality while benefiting from the
economies of scale offered by a nationwide corporation.

Hence the tagline the company has used since the mid
'90s: Better Ingredients, Better
Pizza.

By making inroads into the space of "quality" in hungry eater's
minds (or is it stomachs?), Schnatter was able to take a huge
slice out of the now
$36 billion pizza industry.